Last season was a letdown for quarterback Geno Smith and West Virginia. The Mountaineers started 5-0, then lost five straight games and finished 7-6 – a slip from 10-3 in 2011, Smith’s junior year and his second season as the starter.

Yet the 2012 season in Morgantown was far from dull. The Mountaineers out-scored opponents, on average, 39.5-38.1. They won games 70-63 and 48-45. They lost games 39-38, 55-34 and 50-49. There were 491 total points scored in those five games. In the Jets’ 16 games last season, there were 654 total points.

The Jets will happily accept dull this season, with Smith as their rookie starter. They will embrace Smith as a game manager who limits mistakes, even if he if he rarely conjures memories of the spectacular, gun-slinging quarterback who threw 97 touchdowns and 11,346 yards in three seasons as West Virginia’s starter, while ranking 10th and 11th nationally in pass attempts per game in his final two years.

To win games with the Jets, Smith doesn’t need to lead an offense that scores 40 or 50 points, or perhaps even 30. Unlike West Virginia, which in Smith’s junior year won games by an average of 37.6-26.8, the Jets’ defense is good enough that Smith doesn’t have to be great. At the very least, he doesn’t have to take risks.

The Jets emerged from Sunday’s loss at Tennessee ranking second in the NFL with 283 yards allowed per game, but also with a 2-2 record, largely because they have 12 turnovers, including 11 by Smith. His eight interceptions are one more than he threw in any of his seasons at West Virginia.

As long as he remains healthy, Smith will get to play through his rookie mistakes. Mark Sanchez, on short-term injured reserve, isn’t even eligible to play until the 10th game, if he plays at all. Conflicting reports emerged Monday about whether Sanchez will or won’t undergo season-ending surgery on his right (throwing) shoulder.

For the Jets’ immediate future, it doesn’t really matter. Smith would probably have to be an unmitigated disaster for coach Rex Ryan to start Matt Simms, who has zero NFL regular season snaps, or Brady Quinn. So Smith will try to navigate these challenging next four games – this week’s Monday night trip to Atlanta, the Week 8 midpoint game at Cincinnati, with home contests against Pittsburgh and New England in between. Eleven more turnovers by Smith over that stretch, and the Jets very well could go 0-4.

With a lack of legitimate understudy options, the Jets are rolling with Smith’s problems this season. But he understands the next 12 games are his opportunity to demonstrate he has a future as an NFL starter.

“In this league, if you don’t get it done, there’s a guy,” he said. “They’ll find a guy.”

After committing two, three, two and four turnovers in his first four professional games, Smith has a clear understanding about his single most important duty as the Jets enter the second quarter of their regular season. It’s not to throw for 300 yards and four touchdowns. It is to simply no longer give opponents the football.

“It’s something that it has to stop now in order for us to progress,” he said.

Keeping with routine, he studied video of his two interceptions at Tennessee. They were tight throwing windows, he said, and maybe he could have pinpointed the ball better.

“Otherwise, don’t even try it,” he said. “Just try and take a safe play, maybe check it down or go somewhere else with the ball, but not turn it over.”

His two fumbles happened when he held the ball with just one hand. At Ryan’s urging this week, he is focusing on gripping with two hands when scrambling or dropping back. He said the one-handed approach is “just a natural reaction,” albeit the wrong one.

“At the point when you’re about to throw, you should take your hand off the ball, but the way I’ve been carrying it, I’ve had one hand on it pretty much the entire time,” he said. “It’s just one of those habits you’ve got to break. In order for this team to be the team that we want to be, a part of that is my job to take care of the ball and put two hands on it.”

Smith said some of his 11 turnovers happened because he was “reckless with the ball.” Others occurred when “I may have tried to do too much when there was little there.” The overall lesson remains: No longer can he be a gunslinger, at least not yet at this level.

The first four games showed him as much, and he said they were “an eye-opener for me, allowing me to understand that my role on this team is different from what I’ve been used to. I’m not asked to score as many points. I have a great defense here and we can rely on those guys. As long as I take care of the ball, just keep managing the game, keep us in good situations, we’ll have a chance. My job here is to manage the football game.”